JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1191

In the long line of potent and horrible weapons, few are as so superbly bad as chemical and poison gas.

[This image is available for purchase at our blog bookstore, here.]

The heading of this full-page photo from The Illustrated London News for 18 December 1915 really is quite understated—“remarkable” really doesn’t quite cover it.  First of all, photographs from moving airplanes were not common; secondly, this is one of the earliest images ever made of a poison gas attack in progress, just eight months after the initial use of German poison gas at Ypres (a first-hand account of which can be seen here http://www.firstworldwar.com/diaries/firstgasattack.htm  The experience of poison gas in warfare was still “new”–newer still for the Russians, who were at the receiving end of this unnamed  Eastern Front attack.

The story on this goes as follows: during the night the German enemy forces crawled with metal and glass canisters of the poison gas to the very front of the Russian lines, or at least to the outer edges of the barbed wire perimeter.  The crawler would retreat, and then the whole of the attacking force would wait until daylight and a favorable wind condition at which time rifelmen would discharge at the canister, a direct hit mixing the contents fo the vials, producing the desired gas.  The wind would then pick up the gas and disperse it, the Germans waiting for the first leg of their attack to take effect on the poor soldiers in the trenches, and then attack once the gas had mostly cleared.

And the associated

And this solitary figure:

The masks devised to deal with the attacks were soemtimes effective, sometimes not–actually, they were occasionally enhancers.  The earliest masks were creepy, unworldly, Coraline-like burlap-and-button-faced affairs–I’d hardly wnt to imagine seeing thousnads of these guys come running up to me with rifles and grenades in their hands attacking my position.